SDN and NFV: Facts, Extensions, and Carrier Opportunities

A seminar talk by Prof. Raj Jain to AT&T SDN Forum, April 10, 2014.

It is well known that software defined networking and network function virtualization are key to the future of carriers. What may not be well known is the contentious debate among the industry leaders on approaches to these. In this talk, both sides of these arguments will be presented followed by an extension to the NFV idea that should be of interest to carriers.

The second part of the talk describes our current research in the area of service chaining of globally distributed VNFs. In this presentation we describe OpenADN (Open Application Delivery Network) which allows multiple providers to chain both application-level and network-level services via VNFs distributed globally on several private/public clouds. This is similar to the "Cloud of Clouds" idea currently developing in the industry. There is immense opportunity for carriers to play the key role in this space.